How a 1937 Chevy Coupe made its way into Washington's recruiting photo shoots
Wes Holden, a 2006 UW graduate, rescued his uncle's old car from storage and spent the last 5 years sprucing it up.
Bill Sporich bought the car some time in the 1960s, in Goldendale, Wash., some 70 miles south of Yakima. He drove that used 1937 Chevrolet Coupe on his first date with a young woman named Anne Coleman.
They married in 1968.
Bill was in the Navy, stationed in Hawaii and later shipped to Vietnam. The car stayed at his parents’ house.
It sat there.
It did a lot of that over the next 50 years.
Bill returned from war. The couple eventually moved to Ballard. Wes Holden, Bill’s nephew, remembers catching a glimpse of the coupe in his uncle’s garage. He’d have loved to get his hands on it.
His uncle said no, reasoning: “I think you’re gonna turn it into a hot rod.”
Bill and Anne moved to Tacoma in the early 2000s. The car moved, too, but remained unused, this time stored inside a boat shed. It still had license-plate tabs from 1968. Its paint, originally olive green but coated over with red boat paint, was fading. Blankets covered the car. Boxes and garbage bags surrounded it.
“He was really good at starting projects,” Wes said of his uncle. “He had 50 different things he had started doing. I think the car was on that list of, ‘eventually, I’m going to work on this.’”
It wasn’t to be. Bill’s health had declined, and he died on Jan. 19, 2019, at 73. A few months prior, he had finally handed the car over to Wes, knowing a restoration was in order, and asking that his nephew maintain as many original features as possible.
The Chevy is purple now. Shiny, too. You can’t miss the white-wall tires. The bumpers, door handles and hood hinges are spray-painted gold (re-chroming was prohibitively expensive). Wes hasn’t added it all up, but he figures he’s put $10,000 into it, and he isn’t finished.
It was the original engine and drivetrain, though, powering the car into the Dempsey Indoor on Friday morning, Wes behind the wheel, five years’ worth of refurbishment parked on the Huskies’ indoor track.
“Surreal,” Wes said.
Wes is a civil engineer. He lives in Seattle, and works for a private firm designing airports. He’s also a 2006 UW graduate and a Tyee football season-ticket holder, and he regularly attends the program’s annual signing-day event in February. This year, Wes flagged down Courtney Morgan, UW’s director of player personnel, and showed him a photo of the old Chevy. It immediately got Morgan thinking. He called over Kasey Byers, the program’s senior director of creative services — and the mastermind behind all those slick social-media videos — and he had the same thought: “We want to do something with this.”
They got back in touch a couple months ago, and Byers called with the idea to use the car as a prop for photoshoots with recruits on campus for UW’s big official visit weekend.
The official-visit photoshoot has become a crucial component of the recruiting process. Each school takes pains to make theirs unique. Oregon State sometimes uses a chainsaw. Oklahoma State put a kid on a horse, and Louisville brought out a Rolls Royce. It’s a whole production: prospects dress in full uniform and pose for several different shots, professional lighting and all.
For this weekend’s photos, UW brought its gold throne to midfield at Husky Stadium. Sometimes, there is an umbrella involved. They also take some shots in front of a purple backdrop. And thanks to Wes, prospects also made a stop at the Dempsey, posing in front of Uncle Bill’s gleaming Chevy.
Wes got to hang out as the photographers went to work. He’d never seen the car beneath that type of lighting before.
“I’m looking at it as the one who painted it, like, ‘oh, yeah, I didn’t quite get that buffed out, did I? There’s some scratches right there.’ I’m seeing all the imperfections,” he said with a laugh. “But everyone else seems to like it.”
The photos rolled out across social media this week. Dermaricus Davis, a three-star quarterback prospect, posed sitting in the passenger seat. Deshawn Warner, a three-star edge rusher, posed with his family. Omar Khan, a three-star defensive tackle,, included a photo with the Chevy in his commitment announcement on Monday. The recruits were pretty into it, Wes said, and he enjoyed swapping car stories with some of the parents.
JaMarcus Shephard, Washington’s receivers coach, told Wes: “I’m gonna drive this car in front of the team bus.”
Wes mostly works on the car at his buddy’s shop in Monroe, which also is where he stores it. He says they are the only two who have driven it in the last 50-plus years. It’s not easy. The car has a manual transmission, of course, plus a starter pedal and a high-beam pedal and a choke knob.
The speedometer doesn’t work, Wes says, but he figures top speed is about 55 miles per hour, though it gets a little noisy. “At that point, it’s kind of like sitting on a couch that’s yelling at you,” Wes said. Slower speeds make for fun cruising, though. Last season, he drove and displayed the car at a tailgate prior to Washington’s game against Michigan State. The previous summer, he took it to a car show in Arlington.
Wes realized along the way: “This is an awesome tailgate car.” So he’s considering a special touch for the trunk. “Maybe like a table that slides out,” he said. “I’m working on that with my buddy.”
It was easier to get the straight-six engine running than he anticipated. He installed a new fuel pump and carburetor, tuned it up and soaked the cylinders in oil. “She fired right up,” he said. Wes recorded the moment of first ignition, chuckling in amazement.
He stripped the car down to metal, pulled the fenders off and redid the brake system. His dad was a mechanic, so Wes already knew some of the basics. He also learned from YouTube: how to strip the paint, how to apply primer. (The new paint color, he said, is actually called Purple Rain.) His focus recently has been on the interior, tearing out old insulation, installing carpet, seats, a headliner and sound-deadening material. He re-wired everything, too, adding taillights and turn signals.
“It’s been mostly body work,” Wes said, describing the mechanical aspects as “shockingly decent.” Progress is documented via photos posted to the car’s Instagram page, aptly handled @UncleBillsChevy.
His uncle, he says, “would be super stoked.” Bill got to see some of the early progress, but never saw it painted, and it’s probably fair to assume he never imagined that UW football recruits might some day pose for photos beside it. He did attend UW for two years before his military service, and then in 1974 for a time.
“I think he was just super excited to see me working on it,” Wes said.
The drive from Monroe to Husky Stadium and back covered about 70 miles. It went smoothly. Maybe some day, Wes says, if he can muster the confidence, he’ll drive the Chevy back down to Tacoma.
He’d like to pick up his aunt and take her to lunch.
— Christian Caple, On Montlake
Aunt Anne said the story is amazing and she hopes Bill is watching. It was great talking to you Christian, and I love how the story turned out. Thank you!
Great story! And thanks for including some "before" photos. I've seen so many stories like this that you only see the finished product but not what it looked like starting out. Thanks Christian!